Faith = Belief + Trust

What do a yardstick, a cup and a thermometer have in common? They are tools of measurement, and without them, life would be rather confusing. After all, how could we bake a scrumptious, chewy batch of brownies without measuring the ingredients we use to make them? (I’ll grant you, the bathroom scale is probably one tool we’d rather do without.)
    All too often I’ve heard Christians say, “Your prayer wasn’t answered because you didn’t have enough faith.” When I hear a statement like that I tend to ask myself, “How much is enough?” To calculate something we must have a unit by which to delineate it. But there exists no such thing as a “faithette” for measuring faith. Even Jesus never referred to faith in terms of exact size. I am positive Jesus did this on purpose!

   Measurement opens the door to comparison, and comparison opens the door to pride. The issue isn’t knowing how much faith we have. It’s knowing whether we have faith. The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Collegiate Dictionary defines faith as “belief and trust in and loyalty to God.” The dictionary’s meaning of trust is “to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of : believe.”
   Let’s put these two definitions together. Simply put, to have faith is to believe in God and that he will actually do what he says he’ll do. In her book Lies Women Believe and the Truth that Sets Them Free, Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, “what we believe is revealed, not by what we know or say we believe, but by how we actually live.”
   When I read this, a light went on for me. Do my actions exhibit my belief in God’s truth? I can say I believe God meets all my needs, but if I worry about how I’m going to pay the bills, then I really don’t believe what I’m saying. My worry, which is the way I live, tells me I believe God won’t meet my needs — I am believing a lie.
    For 32 years doubt plagued my walk with God. Now I have a way to determine where my faith is: I look at how I behave. If my actions are contradictory to my words, then I must ask myself, "what lie am I believing?"
   I ask questions of myself all the time, and then wait and expect to hear an answer. Sometimes the answer is another question. My point is that I have an ongoing conversation with myself and with God to get to the root of what I believe. If I don’t expose the lies and replace them with the truth, I will never live boldly for God.
   I want to live boldly. I want to have confidence in God and walk in peace as I face each day and the situations life throws at me. I want to live the reality of Isaiah 26:3...

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” 

    Do our actions line up with what we say or know to be true? It is up to us an individuals to examine our behavior. Faith = Belief + Trust. Do you have faith? Let your actions be your measuring stick.
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A Nebraska native, Debra L. Butterfield has lived far and wide from Hawaii to Germany and numerous points in between. Debra often draws on her experience as an international resident and as a US Marine to inspire her writing. But it is as the mother of a sexual abuse victim that she finds the drive and passion to reach out to women in similar circumstances. Debra is the publisher and editor of the online magazine Glory and Strength and a contributing writer to the Benefit Package. She can be found online at www.gloryandstrength.com and www.debralbutterfield.com.